Utah, the BLM and Uintah County Plan to Desecrate Sego or East Canyon, Utah - 2019

 

Utah, the BLM and Uintah County Plan to Desecrate Sego or East Canyon, Utah

The ancient site known as Sego Canyon is an easy day trip from Moab, Utah. The name "Sego Canyon Petroglyphs" is a bit confusing because the main panels of petroglyphs and pictographs are actually located in Thompson Canyon. From Thompson Springs, Utah, take Utah Highway 94 North, which becomes BLM 159 (Thompson Canyon Road). Accessible with any automobile, the gravel road will lead you to the unpaved parking area adjacent to the “Sego Canyon Rock Art” site, as Google Maps identifies it. You may access the main panels from the parking area at 39°01'05.3"N 109°42'37.2"W.

Sego Canyon itself begins north of Thompson Springs as a fork of Thompson Canyon. Unless you prepare ahead for off-road recovery and dry camping in the wilderness, do not drive any farther up Sego Canyon. In many places, it either crosses the streambed or utilizes the streambed as its roadway. There are no fresh water sources and the road is subject to flash flooding. The trail dead-ends at a defunct mining site, along the southern border of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation.

In the year 2014, the sanctity and solitude of Sego Canyon faced imminent demise. For eleven thousand years or more, most early human visitors either painted or carved their visions into the walls of Sego Canyon. The result was a series of interesting and illustrative panels unsurpassed in all of the American West. Undaunted by its sacred and serene beauty, the Grand County Council planned to put a stop to all of that.

At that time, all three options in the long-term usage plan for Grand County Public Lands called for a fifteen mile long, one or two mile wide transportation corridor straight up Sego Canyon. Commonly called the “Hydrocarbon Highway”, this newly paved and widened road would serve a Mecca of tar sands mines planned on property controlled by State of Utah School and Institutional Lands Commission (SITLA). Unless SITLA and Grand County agreed upon this blatant industrialization of the desert, they would have no access to the tar sand deposits that lay beyond the rim of the Book Cliffs.

Public outcry, both in this blog and throughout the country shamed the Grand County Council into abandoning their reckless plan. Even so, less than five years later, the Grand County Council has revived its draconian plan. After the embarrassment engendered by their callous and uncaring plan finally receded in local memory, several agencies charged with protecting our ancient heritage sites again wish to desecrate them. As the price of crude oil continues to rise, tar sands will become ever more competitive in the marketplace. As prices now rise in 2019, even the local Native American tribe hopes to make the Hydrocarbon Highway plan a reality.

Under the current administration, former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke laid waste to nearby Bears Ears National Monument. At its inception in 2016, Bears Ears consisted of 1.35 million acres. After Zinke had his way with it, only 201,876 acres remained under full federal protection. After disgraceful manipulation of both federal lands, and the budget of his agency, in January 2019, “Slinky Zinke” slithered away into a hoped for obscurity.

Yet, like The Terminator, of movie fame, Zinke reemerged from his lair in April 2019. This time, he was a newly minted executive and board member of Nevada based U.S. Gold Corp. Their tag line is, “World-Class Projects in Mining Friendly, U.S. Jurisdictions”. Zinke's compensation package included salary and stock valued at more than $100,000 and “expenses” of $120,000 per year. After draining his federal budget to support a lavish and questionable jet-setting lifestyle, Zinke can now spend at a similar rate in the private sector. Although forbidden from lobbying his former agency, U.S. Gold Corp. CEO Edward Karr cited Zinke’s “excellent relationship” and “in-depth knowledge of the governmental regulatory and permitting process for mining and exploration companies”. These relationships and knowledge with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Interior Department were included as justifications for his hiring.

Succeeding Zinke in April of 2019, David Bernhardt joined the current administration as its new Secretary of the Interior. After working within the Department of Interior for many years, Bernhardt had more recently served as a lobbyist for the extraction industries. During his tenure as a lobbyist, Bernhardt's clients included Halliburton, Cobalt International Energy, Samson Resources, and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
In other words, Bernhardt is fully in the pocket of Old Energy, as represented by oil, gas and most of all, the “Clean Coal” industry. Get ready for Mr. Bernhardt to push for full-scale development of tar sands in the State of Utah. Although Zinke cannot lobby his former federal agency, there are no restrictions on his lobbying the State of Utah School and Institutional Lands Commission (SITLA).

SITLA owns thousands of acres of potential tar sand mining claims just north of Sego Canyon. If Bernhardt and the likes of Zinke find a way to collaborate tacitly on the extraction of “black gold” from the Sego Canyon tar sands, you can bet that they will. The residents of Grand County, Uintah County and the public at large must remain vigilant. If not, the priceless artifacts and ancient artwork within the Sego Canyon Rock Art site could be defiled.

The rock art images that look down from the walls of Thompson Canyon predate the construction of the Notre Dame Cathedral, which recently burned in Paris. With scientists’ inability to date the earliest pictographs at Sego Canyon, those drawings may predate all human history, including the pyramids of Egypt. No one knows for sure. Anyone who has stood and marveled at the unique beauty of Sego Canyon knows that a paved tar sands haul road would forever alter and destroy this ancient and sacred site.

Who are the people or spirits represented in Sego Canyon? Over the millennia, several types of rock art appeared on the canyon walls, each representing a successive human culture. Some experts claim evidence of human habitation in Sego Canyon dating back to the Archaic Period (6,000 – 2,000 BC). Elsewhere, at the Calico Early Man Site, near Yermo, California, human made material extracted from beneath 100,000-year-old alluvial deposits include a "rock ring". The ring dates back to 135,000 years by thermoluminescence (TL), about 200,000 years by uranium-series analysis, and about 197,000 years by surface beryllium-10 dating. Since there are no adequate ways to use carbon or other dating methods on the earliest Sego Canyon pictographs, their age is indeterminate. For human safety and protection from vandalism, the BLM recently closed Calico Early Man Site to the public. Until adequate funding magically appears, the site will remain off limits to all.

Beginning in an undetermined and ancient age, what we call Barrier Canyon Style rock art panels appeared in Sego Canyon. The Barrier Canyon Style included both pictographs (painted) and petroglyphs (pecked) into the rock surface. Some appear faded and darkened with age, while others have a fresher look and appear similar to red ochre paintings of more recent vintage. The dark, faded and therefore most ancient pictographs often have subtle facial expressions and the appearance of clothing or robes.

In one image, on the far left side of a larger panel is a dark figure, emerging from a grass field. Much like an ancient Sumerian Anunnaki (436,000 BC – 3,700 BC), he wears a dark robe and a spiked or pointed helmet. Obscured by age and weathering, his shoulders and countenance depict him moving forward and to his right. Although small in scale, he represents an apparently giant figure. Scanning down to where his arms might be, he appears to have his hands resting on the shoulders of a much smaller and more humanlike figure.

The smaller figure, superimposed on the lower half of this “Anunnaki Warrior” appears to be walking straight out and into the foreground. He has dark, curly hair and wears a biblical-style flowing robe. Some writings reference the “black headed ones” whom the Anunnaki once ruled. Legend has it that the Anunnaki ruled Gaia, our Mother Earth throughout prehistory. Tired of laboring for the scant amount of gold available on Earth, the Anunnaki developed a slave class, later known as humankind. As gods on Earth, they may have experimented with genetic engineering, including the recombination of their own DNA with that of “Early Man”.

So here, on the walls of Sego Canyon, we have a pictographic suggestion of an Anunnaki god “birthing” Adam into the Garden of Eden. Above the very panel depicting this immaculate birth, are two huge portraits, carved in the stone of the canyon wall. On the left, in profile, is Mother Nature, as represented by a Nubian woman. To her right, intertwined and looking into her face is the classical, white bearded Yahweh, or the “Face of God”. Here, the contrast of a dark and a white face mimics the Anunnaki “Black Knight” and his progeny Adam, a white man with black hair.

As depicted, Yahweh and Mother Nature are in love both with each other and with All that Is. The Anunnaki god, depicted beneath the divine couple, appears to release Adam into what we now know as our own world. After genetic manipulation and creation of humans as a slave class, the Anunnaki lost their final battle in the Pleiadian or the Orion Wars, around 2,000 BC. Upon banishment from Earth, the Anunnaki absconded with Earth’s available gold and returned to their place of origin at Niburu, a brown dwarf planet (or star system) with a highly elliptical orbit around our Sun.

Niburu, also known as “Planet X”, “Planet Nine” or “Nemesis” continues to threaten Earth, as we know it. Niburu has a periodicity that is still in question. Depending on your preferred information source, Niburu returns for a near-Earth dash every 3,600 or 11,000 years. As pictured by scientists and mystics alike, Niburu exists as a huge dark ball of superheated tar. Periodically, as it passes close to the Earth, Niburu is prone to ejecting great swaths of semi-molten petroleum. Old Testament Biblical accounts of fire and brimstone raining from the sky attest to this phenomenon.

As children, we learned a myth about the origins of terrestrial petroleum deposits. Although that myth is widely believed, the petroleum deposits in our Earth did not come from dinosaurs grazing in ancient swampland. Eleven thousand years ago, or at some multiple of that time span, Niburu spewed untold amounts of boiling tar on to the upper reaches of Sego Canyon. As happened in the Bible Lands, so too did the Sego Canyon "Lake of Fire" cool and mix with the desert sands, solidifying and becoming the tar sands, oil and natural gas deposits that we know today. The original "Moabites" were a West-Semitic culture, which flourished in the Ninth Century BCE, or about 11,000 years ago. That time span would coincide with three 3,600 year circuits of Niburu or one major circuit at around 10,800 years.

Remember, the Anunnaki sought to enslave humankind and extract gold for their wealth and pleasure. Old Energy mavens such as Ryan Zinke, David Bernhardt, Edward Karr and the Uintah County Council have their sights set on places like Sego Canyon or East Canyon. Our current day “Anunnaki Wannabes” seek the black gold locked in the tar sands of Sego Canyon. If their self-serving ways prevail, they will build their “Hydrocarbon Highway” straight through Sego Canyon. If so, the ancient depictions of Mother Nature, Yahweh and the Spirit of the Ancients found there and nowhere else shall vanish from the Earth.

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By James McGillis at 04:28 PM | | Comments (0) | Link

Bob Robertson's Boyhood Memories of Thompson Springs, Utah - 2019

 

Bob Robertson's Boyhood Memories of Thompson Springs, Utah

Some say, “History repeats itself”. In Thompson Springs, Utah, it simply vanishes.

Exiting Interstate I-70 at “Thompson”, as the locals call it, is like entering a time warp. Approaching the town on a desolate two-lane road, it feels like you are entering Thompson in the 1890's. In those days “Old Man Thompson” still ran the lumber mill. These days, there are no more trees to fell. There are no more “Thompson's” listed in the phone book. No more steam trains linger at the railroad depot, taking on passengers, coal or water. The nearest passenger station is now miles away, at Green River.

In the past ten years, I have written nine blog articles that mention Thompson or Thompson Springs. I physically revisit the place every year or two. For some reason, Thompson, as a place resonates with me. In 2018, I heard from Mr. Bob Robertson, who was once a resident of Thompson. Since then, Bob has shared with me many details about the history of “Thompson”, as many call the place. Therefore, the rest of this article is in the words of Bob Robertson and his mother, Dorothy (known as Tods).

“Your blog prompted many memories and thoughts about the area I’d like to share, so bear with me as an old man reflects (while he is still able)!

Thompson Springs began its life in 1883 as a station stop on the D&RGW Railroad. A post office was established in 1890, under the name “Thompson’s," named after E.W. Thompson, who lived near the springs and operated a saw mill, to the north, near the Book Cliffs. The town became a community center for the small number of farmers and ranchers who lived in the inhospitable region, and it was a prominent shipping point for cattle that ran in the Book Cliffs area.

The town gained importance with the development of coal mines in Sego Canyon, a few miles north of town. Entrepreneurs built a railroad there in 1911 to connect the mines with the Denver & Rio Grande Western railroad at Thompson. The spur line operated until about 1950.

One added aspect of interest is the actual community of Sego, where the mines were functioning through the 1940s. I remember as a kid in school in Moab, there was a carload of kids driven from Sego to Moab daily to go to school. Education was Grand County's responsibility, until the mines closed around 1948 or 1949. The internet tells of how the community included specific ethnic groups, housed in separate locations in the canyon, which was typical of the times. There was a Japanese section, different European sections, etc. There is very little indication of old home sites now, but there is a cemetery.

It was much like Bingham Canyon Mine in northern Utah, where my wife was born in 1940. Her dad and his brother worked in the mine there during the Second World War, but the uncle was an accountant and her dad drove heavy machinery. Therefore, they had to live in different locations within the canyon.

Construction of Interstate I-70, two miles south of Thompson, drew traffic away from the town, since the former Old Cisco Highway (US-6 & US-50) was no longer maintained. In 1997, the passenger train station closed and moved to Green River, twenty-five miles to the west. The loss of railroad passenger service led to further economic hardship for Thompson Springs.

My Dad (Maury Robertson) ran a gas station in Thompson Springs, beginning in 1935. He lived in a tent with Mom and sister Maurine until they moved the abandoned small one-room Valley City schoolhouse to Thompson, which became their bedroom on their house next to the service station.

I was born in 1937. Later, my Mom made the following comments for my own son about my arrival: “Dear Dan, Your Dad was born when we lived in Thompson. We hadn’t planned to have more children, for Maury was afraid there would be problems of health because of Maurine (Bob’s sister). In addition, we were very poor and living conditions were bad in Thompson. During pregnancy, I got big & miserable with hay fever & also the gnats landed & mixed with my hay fever drink. At that time, Maury had the hired man drive me to Moab two weeks early. The nights in Moab were so hot I about melted – the nights on the desert in Thompson were cool.

When Bob was born, my Dad (Cap Maxwell) drove out to Thompson to tell Maury & he was so tickled with a boy that he told the truth. Maury thought it was a girl all the way to Moab, for he did not think Dad would tell the truth. Cap was a great tease. We argued about what to name the boy. I wanted Vincent Clark & Maury wanted Jim after his father. We already had one Jim in the family. Maurine came to the hospital & said let us name him Bobby & so that was it.

He had a rough upbringing with the hired men that we had at the station in Thompson. Collin Loveridge used to throw him in the air so high I’d nearly flip & Albert Brown, who was a big “roughy” used to get him up in the morning & feed him & let me sleep in. When Bob would not eat his toast for me Albert said, “Oh, I put sugar & Jelly on it, he likes it.”

My Uncle Curt (Dad's brother and business partner in Moab tacked that old schoolhouse onto a storefront that old Doc Williams bought. It became living quarters for my folks, moving Mom & Dad and sister Maurine out of the tent. That was where I got my start. The two-pump service station has the name labeled on the front "Robertson Service," It’s kind of hard to make out in the picture. The brand was Utoco (Utah Oil Co.). Dad also drove the gas truck servicing the towns in the area, Cisco, Moab, Monticello, Blanding, and Bluff).”

Since I-70 became the main east/west route across Utah, lost are locations and memories of road trips from Moab to Grand Junction, Colorado or Price, Utah. Crescent Junction became the first stop after the interstate opened. Then as kids, going west, there was the thrill of the cold-water geyser at Woodside. Traveling east, after Thompson came Cisco, Harley Dome, and then Fruita.

Valley City was home to enough people at some point to warrant a small schoolhouse (that became our home in Thompson Springs, as mentioned earlier). This is where we would drive from Moab in the winter to ice skate on the Valley City reservoir. It was not much of a spot for skating, but to us kids, it was great.

Sis (Maurine Robertson), who was born with a congenital heart defect, died in 1953, during my sophomore year in high school. She had lived twenty-three good years and had brought much joy and happiness to all who knew her. Two years earlier, she had been crowned Rodeo Queen and received much deserved recognition for the beautiful person she was.”

In 1955, Bob Robertson went on to graduate from Grand County High School in Moab. In 1961, after earning a BS Electrical Engineering at the University Of Utah, he joined the “U.S. Space Program” before it even had a name. After active military time at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico and Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, Bob launched a distinguished career in electronics and engineering.

While working for such premier corporations as Intel, Fairchild, AC Spark Plug, Astrodata, Standard Microsystems, Mini-circuits and Motorola, Bob and his family lived in Singapore, Indonesia and Russia. After a later stint teaching at Great Basin College, in Elko, Nevada, Bob moved to Boise, Idaho, where he retired working for Micron Technology. He and his wife (grandparents of twenty-two) now live comfortably in northern Idaho.

Although he has not visited Thompson recently, Bob Robertson's recollections of bygone locations and events in the old ranching and railroad town are as sharp as ever. Thank you, Bob Robertson for sharing your personal history with us all.

This is Part 2 of the Thompson Springs Story. To read Part 1, “Thompson Springs, Utah - From Boom Town to Ghost Town”, please click “Here”. To read Part 3, "Sego Canyon - Land of the Ancients", please click "Here".

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By James McGillis at 03:23 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Thompson Springs, Utah - From Boom Town to Ghost Town - 2018

 

Thompson Springs, Utah - From Boom Town to Ghost Town

In May 2008, when I made my first visit to Thompson Springs, Utah, I had no idea what to expect. Before that, I had never heard of the place. While in Moab that year, someone had suggested that I visit the old Indian Rock Art panels in nearby Sego Canyon. After wending my way from Moab, north on U.S. Highway 191, I referred to my Utah Atlas & Gazetteer. By following a few simple turns, I soon connected to an unpaved strip of dirt named Valley City Road. According to my map, that road ran on a diagonal, straight to Thompson Springs.

On that dusty track, I thought about the name, originally called “Thompson”. Someone later added the word “Springs” to the official place name. The 1961 book, “Five Hundred Utah Place Names”, has no mention of either Thompson or Thompson Springs. Although almost every source now labels it as Thompson Springs, the locals in Grand County have shortened the moniker to “Thompson”. For the sake of brevity, I shall henceforth call the place Thompson.

Indeed, Thompson had once been a thriving town, located on old Highway U.S. 6 & 50. In the first half of the twentieth century, the town featured a hotel, a motel, a diner, a grocery store, several filling stations and a passenger railroad depot. Up past the ancient rock art in Sego Canyon ran a standard gauge railroad, which serviced a low-grade coalmine at its terminus. In the days of steam locomotives, the fresh water springs at Thompson created a mandatory stopping place for all trains traveling along the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad mainline. By the 1970s, diesel-electric locomotives had replaced steam power, making a water-stop in Thompson irrelevant.

Simultaneously, the newly completed Interstate I-70 bypassed Thompson entirely. The old Highway 6 & 50, while skirting the southern edge of the Book Cliffs, had bisected Thompson. On its stretch between Green River and Cisco, the new route for I-70 lay several miles to the south. The widowed owner of the Crescent Junction service station had lobbied hard to have the new highway to pass adjacent to her business. In deference to her desires, the chief highway engineer at the time changed the final I-70 route to suit her needs. That Crescent Junction gas station still stands today, now known as Papa Joe’s Stop & Go.

The realigning of I-70 that far north necessitated a major road-cut just west of Crescent Junction. Eastbound from Crescent Junction, highway engineers saw no way to include Thompson in their plans. As was the story with many towns built along earlier highways and rail lines, running the interstate through Thompson would have destroyed the place. Instead, they skirted Thompson, thus creating an eastbound route with an unexpected descending curve. The softhearted chief engineer had foregone a more logical and less difficult route in deference to the owner of one small business in Crescent Junction.

After the complete bypass of Thompson, only a single new service station was visible from the interstate highway. Although a highway interchange allowed access to Thompson from both eastbound and westbound I-70, few travelers visited the town. For almost forty years, from around 1970 until the Moab tourism boom beginning in 2010, Thompson continued to wither and die.

In recent years, the Desert Moon Hotel and RV Park and the Ballard RV Park and Cabins have sprung back to life. The Ballard RV Park stands on a site that housed hundreds of trailer homes during the construction of the interstate highway. Recently refurbished, the Ballard now houses many seasonal workers recently “priced out” of Moab, thirty-eight miles away. As the new working class suburb for Moab, the Ballard rarely has a seasonal vacancy for overnight travelers.

Despite the success of the Desert Moon and the Ballard, by 2015 no other publically identified businesses functioned in Thompson. The Thompson Motel, The old brick-front Silver Grill and the railroad depot had all shut down for good. One of the few functioning landmarks was the namesake Thompson Springs waterworks. There, local residents and trucks from the nearby Utah Department of Transportation yard could fill their water tanks. Other than the gas station and minimart located near I-70, there were few signs of economic vitality.

By 2018, after extensive damage by vandals, the Union Pacific Railroad had torn down its defunct passenger rail depot. One after another, as abandoned homes or businesses became a danger to the public, they disappeared, seemingly without a trace. Within the town, the last census indicates that thirty-nine hardy souls dwell in the alternating heat and cold of the desert. Other sources claim up to ninety-three people reside in Thompson.

Recently, a landlocked pontoon boat somehow made its way from Lake Powell to Thompson, where it sits up on blocks. With its waterslide still intact and a stovepipe running up the side of the cabin, I wondered if it was a remote retreat or someone’s permanent home. Could this be the beginning of a new housing boom in Thompson?

Despite sporadic signs of life, Thompson appears to be transitioning to ghost town status. In the past decade, many former landmarks have disappeared. Each time I visit Thompson, I try to take pictures of the remaining structures. Upon my next visit, there will surely be fewer of them still standing.

This is Part 1 of the Thompson Springs Story. In Part Two, Bob Robertson, a native of the area born in 1937 reminisces about his childhood in Thompson and Grand County, Utah.

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By James McGillis at 02:47 PM | Travel | Comments (0) | Link

Let's Go Places and Find New Roads to Crescent Junction, Utah - 2017

 

Let's Go Places and Find New Roads to Crescent Junction, Utah

Recently, I received an email message from Ms. Bobbe Wimmer Kidrick. She wrote, “I read your articles about Crescent Junction, Utah with a great deal of pleasure. My grandfather, Thomas G. Wimmer initiated the homesteading of Crescent Junction. I have pictures of family members, some of the buildings and additional history.”

Bobbe went on, “The history of Crescent Junction really began with the homestead. My grandfather, Thomas G. Wimmer was a diversified businessman (sheepman, river runner and freight hauler) who lived in Green River in the early 1900's. In 1916, he contracted to haul equipment from the railroad to build the copper mine at Big Indian, some fifty miles south of Crescent, in the Lisbon Valley, Utah.”

“At the time (1915/16), the road didn't go directly from Moab to Crescent. It went north as far as the place then called Valley City. From that central point, the road veered west to Floy (AKA Little Grand) and east to Thompson (now Thompson Springs). Because there was a railroad siding at Crescent (Brendel), he decided it would be easier on his team to go directly north to Crescent. A short time into the operation, he persuaded his two daughters, Laura and Marg to file for a homestead at what is now Crescent Junction.”

“Laura and Marg filed for 160-acres each, and my dad, Ed Wimmer, being too young to file, lived there with them. Ed fell in love with the desert and no matter where he was, he was always ‘going home’. For the required five years, Laura, Marg and Ed lived at the railroad siding known as Brendel, with no road access closer than Thompson, which is six miles to the east. In 1923, after living there for the required five years, the two young women received the patents for 160-acres each. They later divided the 320-acres into three parcels of 106 acres each, and deeded the middle parcel to their Dad (Thomas Wimmer). This then was the beginning of Crescent.”

Bobbe said, “I am telling you all this to put it in perspective. Although I was born in Moab, I now live in the Salt Lake area. Here, I will tell my father, Ed Wimmer’s story.”

“Ed Wimmer was born in Salt Lake City in 1900, but spent much of his formative years in Green River, Utah. He grew to love the desert, to the point that no matter where he went throughout his life, he always returned. After graduating from East High in SLC, he married Erma Snyder and they moved to Helper, Utah, where he worked as a Railroad Express Messenger. As such, he was required to carry a gun because he took the mine payroll from Helper to Sunnyside, a distance of thirty-three miles. Their oldest child, Bette was born in Helper.”

“The family moved to Los Angeles shortly after Bette was born and Ed worked for Crescent Creamery. Their second child, Bud was born at this time. From there, the growing family moved back to Utah, living in the town of Cliff. At that time, son Duane was born in nearby Fruita, Colorado. Soon thereafter, the family moved again to Los Angeles, where Ed worked in the petroleum industry. Their fourth child, Pat was born at this time.”

“In March of 1932, an earthquake shook Southern California and the country was in the middle of the Depression. After arranging with his brother, Andy to buy calves and start a dairy heard in Utah, the whole family traveled by automobile back to Utah. Even in early April, it was hot in the desert, so they traveled at night for the first two days. Bette remembers Las Vegas as being little more than a small oasis, and certainly no casinos.”

“Their journey took them through Mesquite, Nevada, and on to St. George and Cedar City, Utah. They turned east at Cove Fort and then through Price, and eventually to Green River. When a hoped-for ranch in Green River was unavailable, Ed moved the family to Moab in 1934, where he continued to try to make a go of the dairy business. The last child, Bobbe was born there in 1934. Even after moving the family to Roosevelt, the dairy business did not thrive.”

“When the Second World War broke out in 1941, Ed secured a job as a welder in Salt Lake at the Remington Arms plant. Also during that time, he worked in Hawaii as a welder, repairing damage sustained during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  As the War ended, he then returned to Salt Lake, where he started a service station. In 1947, Ed Wimmer headed back to Crescent for what would be the last time. There he established the Crescent Junction Service and Café, which he and Erma owned jointly until his death in 1951. Erma retained ownership of both businesses until 1969, when she turned the service station over to son Pat and the Café over to daughter Bette and her husband, Al Lange.”

“After the War ended, Dad headed back to Crescent. He had very little money but owned a redwood livery barn in the backyard of the house in Salt Lake. After dismantling the barn, Dad, Bud and Duane left Salt Lake with a load of wood and high hopes to begin the building at Crescent Jct. They laid the foundation of Crescent in July of 1947. It was on July 24, that they poured the cement floor. At the time, Dad marked the date in the wet cement writing, ‘Just 100 years after Brigham (Young)’.”

“Mom and Dad gave their all to Crescent and in many respects; they expected the same from the rest of us. Money was always hard to come by, so we made do with what was available. Mom sold the house in Salt Lake. The proceeds went to pay debts incurred by an employee at Dad’s service station on Main Street, Salt Lake. Dad felt honor-bound to clear up everything even though he was not legally responsible. I also found out, years later, that he had cashed savings bonds belonging to me to buy materials for the first building. No matter… it was a family project and we all did what we could. Some of the proceeds from a small curio business I handled during the early 1950s also went into the business.”

“Providence has a way of looking out for those who can't or don't look out for themselves. In Crescent, we had been using a Koehler Light Plant for power. Then, just a few months before Dad died, Utah Power & Light built a small sub-station to provide electricity to Crescent. By that time, all the debts from Salt Lake had been paid and there was a growing business with comfortable living quarters. Dad (Ed Wimmer) died in October 1951, but in his fifty-one years, he had done what he set out to do. He made it home to Crescent, and in doing so, took some of us ‘home’ with him.”

“Mom (Erma Wimmer), was often seen as strong willed and opinionated, but over the next eighteen years, those traits would serve her well. Upon dad’s death in 1951, she became sole owner of the business. From 1947 through 1966, Crescent’s water problem was solved by hauling water from Thompson, six-miles east. At first, we used a fifty-gallon barrel on the back of a pickup. Later, as need dictated, we graduated to a 1000-gallon tank on a larger truck. A cistern was built and the water dumped into it, to be pumped out as needed.”

“The cistern was in place until 1966, when mom obtained a loan from Utoco (Utah Oil Refining Company), to buy the necessary supplies to build a waterline from Thompson. Pat, with the help of family and friend Tony Pene, walked a Ditch Witch from Thompson to Crescent during 1966 and ‘67. In the resulting trench, they installed the waterline. The loan was paid back through gas sales for the next several years.”

“In the early 1970s, there was a move underway to build Interstate Highway I-70 between Colorado and I-15 in Western Utah. Mom became aware of the fact that the new highway was proposed to go through Grand County. When she discovered that its route would bypass Crescent Junction, about four miles south of the existing highway between Thompson and Green River, she took action. She approached Archie Hamilton, the project manager, and offered to trade acreage at Crescent for the new project. He accepted her offer and I-70 now runs parallel to the old highway. If built as originally planned, I-70 would have bypassed Crescent Junction, leaving the Wimmer family business high and dry.”

“When Aunt Marg died in 1949, she left her original portion of the Homestead to Dad (Ed Wimmer). Upon his death, under Utah law, the property was intestate. As such, one-third went to Mom (Erma Wimmer) and the remaining two-thirds to his five children. By 1955, Bud, Duane, Pat and I were all married. Bud lived in California, Duane in Moab, teaching school, Pat at Crescent, managing the station and my husband Ralph and I lived in various places throughout the country, due to his work. We always kept our mailing address at Crescent and Mom would forward it each week.”

“In 1969 mom got in touch with, Bud, Duane and me, saying that she was considering signing the business over to Pat and Al, in joint tenancy with rights of survivorship. She asked what we all thought about that idea. We all three agreed that it was her right to make the decision. She explained in the letter that she was feeling a certain amount of pressure to make sure the business remained, as it then existed. She did just that and the business remained that way until recent years.”

“Thomas Wolfe once said ‘You can't go home again’ and largely, he was right. It just all depends on how or what you define as home, I guess. I will never ‘go home again’ physically but I know ‘home’ is there at Crescent Junction.”

Here, I will express my appreciation to Bobbe Wimmer Kidrick. She is one of a few individuals who have both lived and worked at Crescent Junction, Utah. By sharing stories about her extended family and their home in the desert, she has made her “home” come alive.

In 2009, I first mention Crescent Junction in an article titled, “Rediscovering the Old Spanish Trail - Now it's a Freeway”. In 2010, I returned to the area and wrote “Green River to Floy, Utah, via Old Hwy. U.S. 6 & 50”. Later that year, I wrote, “Crescent Junction, Utah - It isn't Brendel Anymore”. In 2011, I wrote about the transfer of uranium mine tailings from Moab to a disposal site near Crescent Junction in, “The ‘Train of Pain’ Travels Thirty Miles from Moab to Crescent Junction”. In 2012, I wrote, “Interstate I-70 from Cove Fort to Crescent Junction, Utah”.

Also in 2012, I wrote, “Brendel, Utah - Still Moving Around on the Map”. When Bobbe Wimmer Kidrick’s niece, Lani (Lee Anne Lange Asay) wrote to me with some pictures of Crescent Junction, I published, “A Resident of Crescent Junction, Utah Tells the History of the Place”. In 2014, when the Grand County Council made plans to defile the Sego Canyon Indian Rockart site near Thompson Springs, I wrote “Grand County Council Plans to Desecrate Sego Canyon’s Ancient Indian Heritage Site”.

If you find yourself traveling past Crescent Junction, Utah on I-70, be sure to stop at Papa Joe's Stop & Go for gas and refreshments. If you do, you will see firsthand the place homesteaded by the Wimmer family a century ago. You may also notice that in Crescent Junction, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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A 1965 Visit With My Father to Old Arches National Monument, Moab, Utah - 2012

 

A 1965 Visit With My Father to

Old Arches National Monument, Moab, Utah

“Wilderness – we scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination. Why such allure in the very word?” – Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

During two seasons in the late 1950s, Edward Abbey took up residence in a trailer at the old Arches National Monument. Over fifty-five years later, exactly where Edward Abbey's trailer stood is a subject of controversy. As the least likely government employee ever, Abbey was the park ranger who kept things clean and neat out at the end of the road. There, near Devil’s Garden, Abbey observed the timelessness landforms and a rapidly changing political landscape. The only hint of his future status as a proto-anarcho-communist environmentalist came in this passage from his 1968 book, Desert Solitaire.

Page 59, “For about five miles I followed the course of their survey back toward headquarters, and as I went I pulled up each little wooden stake and threw it away, and cut all the bright ribbons from the bushes and hid them under a rock. A futile effort, in the long run, but it made me feel good.”

In 1965, my father, Dr. Loron N. (Duke) McGillis and I visited many of the places that Abbey was to make famous in Desert Solitaire or in his most famous fiction work, The Monkey Wrench Gang. In Desert Solitaire, Abbey wrote with wry humor about tourists abusing even the sacred walls of a national monument. The somewhat sickening, yet heart-pounding acts of eco-sabotage came later, in The Monkey Wrench Gang and its various sequels. This article, largely in Abbey’s own words focuses on the kinder, gentler author we first met on the pages of Desert Solitaire.

Landscape Arch – In 1965, my father and I hiked the unimproved trail to Landscape Arch. Although far more delicate than the arch named Delicate Arch, we found no fence or other barriers to climbing up the hill and under that gracefully suspended stone slab. Stopping short of the arch itself, our instincts were good. One afternoon, twenty-six years later, picnickers sitting beneath the arch barely scrambled away from a mighty rock fall there.

Near that spot, my father positioned his Nikon camera to show both Landscape Arch and the smaller Partition Arch above and to its right, near the rim. As I reviewed old Kodak Ektachrome slides of our time there, I was not sure if the second arch was real, or just a flaw in the 35-MM film. After pouring over fifteen pages of Google images, I found only two photographs that included Partition Arch in the same shot. I wonder where that photo spot is. It would be nice if Arches National Park could provide a protected path to the spot where those rare photos originated.

Page 37, “I reach the end of the road and walk the deserted trail to Landscape Arch and Double-O Arch, picking up a few candy wrappers left from the weekend, straightening a trail sign which somebody had tried to remove, noting another girdled and bleeding pinion pine, obliterating from a sandstone wall the pathetic scratchings of some imbeciles who had attempted to write their names across the face of the Mesozoic.”

Page 267, “In the government truck I make a final tour of the park, into the Devil’s Garden where I walk for the last time this year out the trail past Tunnel Arch, Pine Tree Arch and Landscape Arch, all the way out to Double-O Arch at the end of the path.”

Book Cliffs – Thirty-five miles north of Moab, Utah stand the majestic Book Cliffs. From Green River to the west, past Crescent Junction in the middle and on to Thompson Springs to the east, they parallel both the Union Pacific Railroad mainline and Interstate I-70. Stark in their appearance, the Book Cliffs angle of repose is too steep and the terrain too dry to support more than sparse vegetation. In broad daylight, as our 1965 image shows, the Cretaceous sandstone capping the cliffs stand tall and unbroken, like the skyline of a major city. In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey often mentions the Book Cliffs.

Page 4, “On the north and northwest I see the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, the two-level face of the Uintah Plateau.”
 
Page 23, “I refer to the garden which lies all around me, extending from here to the mountains, from here to the Book Cliffs, from here to Robbers’ Roost and Land’s End, an area about the size of the Negev.”

Page 118, “Mornings begin clear and dazzling bright, the sky as blue as the Virgin’s cloak, unflawed by a trace of cloud in all of that emptiness bounded on the North by the Book Cliffs.”

Page 269, “For a few minutes the whole region from the canyon of the Colorado to the Book Cliffs – crag, mesa, turret, dome, canyon wall, plain swale and dune – glows with a vivid amber light against the darkness on the east.”

Dead Horse Point – If you have seen the Movie Cars, you know Dead Horse Point. After visiting Moab while on vacation, Pixar director John Lasseter copied whole scenes from that place and etched them into the minds of millions. What those movie viewers may not realize is that Lasseter got it right. The view from Dead Horse Point to the Shafer Trail and beyond to the Colorado River looks impossible in its depth, yet you can recognize it in the movie.

In 1965, the landscape did look different than it does today. Below, in a place called Potash, the Texas Gulf Sulphur Company was only two years into conventional mining of Potash salts. With its processing facility hidden upstream, the Paradox Basin anticline still looked pristine. Readers will also note that my father had a penchant for tempting fate, standing within only a few feet of the precipice. A few times on our trip, he convinced me to do the same. Today, I would chalk that up to youthful exuberance.

Not until 1970, five years after our visit, did the now famous blue settling ponds appear on bench land above the Colorado River. From then on, solution mining, or hydraulic fracking of the anticline salt beds continued in earnest. In Desert Solitaire, Abbey focuses on several aspects of Dead Horse Mesa, but not the potash mine or its future risk to the environment.

Page 11, “…of Dead Horse Mesa, a flat-topped uninhabited island in the sky which extends for thirty miles north and south between the convergent canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers. Public domain. Above the mesa the sun hangs behind streaks and streamers of wind-whipped clouds.”

Page 66, “Finally he was discovered ten days after the search began near an abandoned miner’s shack below Dead Horse Point. They found him sitting on the ground hammering feebly at an ancient can of beans, trying to open the can with a stone.”

Page 209, “…for the diversion, I throw canteens and rucksack into the government pickup and take off. I go west to the highway, south for three miles, and turn off on another dirt road leading southwest across Dead Horse Mesa toward the rendezvous.

Page 219, “Getting late; the sun is down beyond Back-of-the-Rocks, beyond the escarpment of Dead Horse Point. A soft pink mist of light, the alpenglow, lies on the (La Sal) mountains above timberline. I hurry on, south of Moab, off the highway on the gravel…”

Page 223, “There is no trail and many dead and fallen trees make progress difficult… Dead Horse Point and Grandview Point, and farther away, farthest of all, wonderfully remote, the Orange Cliffs, Lands’ End and the Maze, an exhilarating vastness…”

Page 265, “Enough of Land’s End, Dead Horse Point, Tukuhnikivats, and the other high resolves; I want to see somebody jump out of a window or off a roof. I grow weary of nobody’s company but my own – let me hear the wit and wisdom of the subway…”

While on our 1965 Grand Tour of the Four Corners states, my father and I had many adventures. As a teenager from California, I did not expect ever to see such exotic desert and mountain landscapes again. Not until 2006, over thirty years later did I again visit Moab, Arches, Canyonlands and Dead Horse Point. Although the political and demographic landscape had changed, the timeless beauty of Edward Abbey’s realm had not.

In Part 2 of my 1965 saga, my father, Duke McGillis and I visit Lake Powell and Rainbow Bridge. To read that next chapter, please click HERE.

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